F&F Haskell Testnet Initial Feedback

The Haskell Testnest has been running for a few days now, I know how keen the community is to hear feedback from the pool operators involved in this intial phase.

The reason behind the Friends and Family stage of the Haskell testnet was explained in this article by Casey Monroe.

I have been directly monitoring participation, it is clear that IOHK are working around the clock to support the operators setting up their stake pools and solving any issues found; there are even IOHK employees who have created a telegram account just to join the F&F channel to help support.

When ready, the operators have agreed to help a minimum of two more operators set up their pools. This will continue until all Incentivised Test Network (ITN) operators are running their stake pools on the Haskell Testnet; then it’s deciding a date for the ITN snapshot, for ada holders to balance check their rewards prior to the release of Shelley Mainnet. - ada holders Click here for information around moving from testnet to mainnet.

To help satisfy early eagerness and anticipation, I asked the following question

“Would someone mind writing a short ‘experience feedback’ I can forward onto the community. What’s your first impression of the Haskell Testnet, especially compared to the Jormungander ITN”

Here are a few of the operators answering that question for the community (Any other operators involved in this early stage are also welcome to comment):


I think for Cardano Community who are keenly watching and excited about this phase, it would be informative and encouraging to know the progress:

  1. How many Pool Operators are now using the HTN since 05/11/20

  2. The daily rate of Pool Operators that are being moved to the HTN since 05/11/20

Hi Stevod,

Thank you for the feedback:

  1. There are currently 21 operators in the Haskell Testnet working with IOHK.

  2. This one is difficult, when iohk and the operators agree, it will be a very quick process to bring everyone in. Probably better to monitor by the hour, rather than the day.

Awesome! So we have some starting metric. Just for the benefit of the Community, the target metric for moving all Pools (most likely fewer Pool Operators) is the number of Registered Pools in the ITN =1,268 as at 14th May 2020 taken from the posting by Laurie [IOHK Team]: Shelley Incentivized Testnet: 14th May 2020 which is shown below:

You are correct in that there are 1268 Registered pools. However, this number will not match / come across to the Haskell Testnet, let me explain why.

  • There are registered stake pools which are not being maintain anymore (pool operator abandoned them, for what ever reason).

  • A stake pool operator is running more than one stake pool. There is no need for the operator to start up all their pools again as people will not be delegating to them and there are no rewards. - Although for testing, operators may start multiple pools, so the amount of pools on the Haskell Testnet could be higher or lower than this number.

I am not sure how many unique pool operators there are in the ITN, this number would give a more accurate prediction.

Some people (like myself) may not even set a pool up on the Haskell testnet, so you can already discount my pool.

Edit: If you look at the picture you posted, it shows 952 pools with at least 1 ada delegated to it. So already that shows a different ‘active’ number to how many are registered


Thanks for the clarifications, much appreciated.

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